Generally single conveyor sections or trays are laterally tiltedly arranged such that the unloading may be effected by a selected actuation of associating tilting mechanism for these trays; however, it has been proposed to effect an unloading operation by using stationary deflector means which, in selected unloading station, may be introduced into the moving path of the articles for guiding articles to that particular unloading station.
The unloading stations can be placed rather close to each other and each having an almost minimized dimension in the conveying direction, whereby it is important that the unloading operations be effected with high accuracy, i.e. during the movement of the relevant trays through relatively short, well defined lengths. The development has gone in the direction of a central control of these and many other functions in the system, because from a central control system is is possible to account for the location of all the trays, when the tray passages are detected at a single place only. Based on such detections a central control unit, which is informed of the destination code and of the time and place of loading of each article, will be able to actuate the unloading at just the selected unloading station, when only the conveyor itself is constructed with the required accuracy, here particularly with respect to a highly uniform pitch of the trays, such that each of the trays will be located just at the place that can be calculated based on the number of tray passages subsequent to the passage of each of the trays at the place of detection.